I’m working on a “light select” render element that allows you to extract the normal/raw/diffuse/specular contribution of a single light to a separate element (the direct lighting components only for now); this is basically done but I have a question on its integration in Maya. There are two possible options:
1) The type of element (normal/raw/diffuse/specular) is determined by which light output is connected to the element (lightColor/lightIntensity/lightDiffuse/lightSpecilar), or
2) Add a “type” attribute which specifies what kind of contribution is stored in the element.
Which of these would be more friendly for Maya users? (note that it’s all the same for V-Ray as it works differently under the hood anyways).
Best regards,
Vlado
By light output connection
With a separate “type” attribute in the render element
would be great to be able to connect a light to a render element and specify which of the components it outputs such as specular, diffuse etc. Would it also be like one light per one element? or would you be able to connect multiple lights to single element and vray will do the splitting?
I’m a fan of option 2, based on my impression of how it’d work. It would seem to me that much more could go wrong during setup with option #1, and it’d likely require tool development on the user’s end for consistency.
Yes, it turned out that I don’t really have a choice but to use option 2, since the render element is now implemented also as an object set and multiple lights can be attached to it.
Nope, we don’t plan on implementing a mixer. You must use a separate compositing application to add the light contributions together. People mostly wanted this for easier post-production.
Of course at two ones, I refer to the ability to play with lights one time rendered, not at the mixer itself. I must recognize the Vlado answer has been more detailed that my own question.